Human Resource Management – Shared Tacit Assumptions

Shared Tacit Assumptions

To understand this deeper level, one has to think historically about these organizations. Throughout the history of the company, what were the values, beliefs, and assumptions of the founders, attitude of people and key leaders that made it successful? Recall that organizations are started by individuals or small teams who initially impose their own beliefs, values, ideas and assumptions on the people whom they hire. If the founders ’ values and assumptions are out of line with what the environment of the organization allows or affords, the organization fails and never develops a culture in the first place.

To obtain good decisions and implementation of those decisions, people must argue things out and that the imposition of this way of working creates a set of products that were successful. He then could attract and retain others who believed the same thing (that one must always argue things out). If by this means they continued to be successful in creating products and services that the market liked, these beliefs and values would gradually come to be shared and taken for granted. They become tacit assumptions about the nature of the world and how to succeed in it.

Organizations are bound together internally not just by common ownership or by everything being included on the balance sheet. Culture, ‘the ways we do things around here’ is difficult to define but easy to identify, especially when it is articulated well and often. It is normally up to the Chief Executive to set out or re-define the principle aspects, the philosophy, the set of values and the essential style of management but it is HR that must be responsible for championing and disseminating these cultural aspects around the organization in an effective fashion.